By Shari Shapiro
A friend told me a story this week about his daughter. She is starting seventh grade, and the night before school she tried on eight outfits for her mother. He watched part of it from the next room. Eight. He shook his head about it. Middle schoolers! But I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
What she was doing was not about clothes. She was working out how she would walk into that building. Who she would be to the girl at the next locker, to the teacher who has not met her yet, to the kids who knew her last year and may have decided something about her over the summer. She was rehearsing.
Her mother sat on the bed through all eight and said she liked the third one. She did not rush her. It was late and there was plenty else to do, but she stayed on the bed anyway. There are not many nights like that left with a seventh grader.
The next morning his daughter came down in something else. Not the third one, not anything her mother had seen the night before. Her mother smiled and didn’t mention it.
I have been at Kids In Crisis a long time, and the last week of August looks a little different from where I sit.
At SafeHaven, our emergency shelter, we have children getting ready for the first day too. Some have been with us a few days. Some came the night before. They are here because something at home came apart, and there was nowhere else to go. They are going back to the same schools, sometimes the same classrooms, with the same work ahead of them that any seventh grader has. Walk in. Look like nothing happened. Answer the question about summer.
What our kids do not have is eight outfits. Or a good summer story.
They have a bag. Sometimes it holds what they were wearing when they arrived, plus whatever we could put together for them. Our staff does way too much laundry in August.
One of our counselors told me about a boy who changed his shirt twice before we drove him to school. She did not say anything about it while it was happening. She made sure there was a second shirt, and then a third, and when he came down the stairs she said his name.
Sometimes noticing is the most important thing we can do for our kids. Not fixing. Just noticing.
Some of the kids in Lighthouse, our program for LGBTQ+ young people, spend the night before deciding whether the person they are at our kitchen table is the same person they can be in a hallway at school. That is so much to carry on a Tuesday morning in September. A child should not have to run that calculation before homeroom. But so many of them do.
Every kid is working out how to be seen. The difference is who is in the room while they do it. A girl on a Sunday night has someone sitting on the bed. Our children have whoever is on shift that night.
I am not going to ask you for anything except this. The next time someone is asking for your attention, and it might seem small, or vain, or funny, it probably is not any of those things. It is usually a person deciding who to be. So give them a minute of your time. They picked you.
Some children do not have that person. That is most of why we are here. We keep the beds made and the phone answered, and we make sure that somebody is looking at them on purpose while they figure it out.
It might not seem like much. But sometimes it turns out to be the most important thing we can do.
Kids In Crisis is here 24 hours a day, every day, for any child or family in crisis. Call or text our helpline at 203-661-1911.
